The United States may be setting the stage for an
industrial-strength military presence in Syria, given the narrow capabilities
of special operations forces, former US head of Central Command David Petraeus
said at a Brookings Institute event on land warfare.

WASHINGTON
(Sputnik) — The Obama administration has been clear that it does not
intend to replicate the recent US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where
hundreds of thousands of US troops were deployed.

“If you want to degrade and defeat the Islamic
State and the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and the Khorasan group, the
al-Qaeda element… in northern Syria, you are going to have
to have a ground force,” Petraeus stated on Friday.

Earlier
on Friday, the White House announced it would deploy fewer than 50
additional special forces to Syria to assist in the fight
against the Islamic State.

“We have very small capabilities…[within special
forces missions], but not the industrial strength capabilities we have
needed in a number of cases in the last 15 years, and I think
for the foreseeable future we are going to have even more
of these,” Petraeus said of the larger US ground presence.

The
narrow focus of special operations missions means they are not equipped
with the abilities to run large-scale logistics, communications,
repairs and other tasks that conventional forces are able to do, Petraeus
explained.

Petraeus
was the US Commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq
during the 2007 troop surge, and Commander of US Central Command
during the 2009 Afghanistan surge, which brought US troop levels close
to 100,000.

US Provision of Heavy Weapons to Syrian
Opposition Well Known

The
United States has been providing TOW anti-tank weapons to Syrian
opposition fighters, but questions remain about providing
anti-aircraft missiles, David Petraeus said.

“With respect to the arming of the Syrian
forces, I think first of all it is actually publicly known that we have
been arming them with considerably additional systems, as have some
of our partners in the Gulf… Those TOW weapons systems are coming
from somewhere.”

In early
October, a number of US lawmakers suggested arming Syrian moderate
opposition fighters with shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, or
MANPADS, in response to the Russian military intervention
in Syria.

“There always is a big question about shoulder
launched anti-aircraft missiles, because of the fear that they can take
down a commercial airliner somewhere out in the region,” Petraeus
said when asked if he would recommend the US provision of MANPADS
to Syrian opposition fighters.

He
described the US provision of TOW missiles as “a game-changer” because
of their ability to destroy “the Russian tanks that have been
provided to the Syrians.”

The
Pentagon recently ended its program to arm and train Syrian moderate
fighters, but the CIA has reportedly maintained its program
to provide weapons to Syrian opposition fighters since 2012.

assange

At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case.